The present invention relates to test tubes in general, and more particularly, to an apparatus for inserting pump mechanisms into test tubes which are sealed by a closure such that the contents of the test tube may be discharged without removing the closure from the test tube.
Heretofore it has been known to provide a resilient closure or rubber stopper for a container and to discharge the contents of the container by first establishing inlet and outlet flow paths through the closure. Air pressure through the inlet path pressurizes the interior of the container and causes the contents to flow through the outlet path. Devices of this type are, of course, known and, prior to the present invention, the establishing of the fluid flow paths was accomplished by manually puncturing the closure with a pump mechanism.
There are, of course, numerous concerns when puncturing the closure of a test tube. A fundamental problem, of course, is that a test tube is formed of glass and, therefore, is subjected to breaking if excessive forces are utilized. Equally important is the need to align the direction of force relative to the elongated axis of the test tube to provide proper positioning of the pump mechanism. Furthermore, the amount of force necessary to penetrate or puncture the test tube closure will be minimized if the direction of the inserting force is along the longitudinal axis of the test tube rather than at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the test tube. Yet another problem in connection with manually attaching pump mechanisms to test tubes by puncturing test tube closures is the difficulty in handling such mechanisms because of their relatively small size. A still further problem is the amount of time and labor involved in attaching pump mechanisms to a large quantity of test tubes if each pump must be attached manually and sequentially, on an individual basis, rather than attaching a plurality of pump mechanisms simultaneously to individual test tubes.